5 CSUN Professors Earn Recognition

Cal State Northridge has recognized five professors for their outstanding teaching abilities, a university spokesman announced this week.

The winners, who received $500 each and were honored last month at a breakfast reception, are Behzad Bavarian, Brian Castronovo, Donald Hall, Rie Rogers Mitchell and Joseph Moore.

In the annual Distinguished Teaching awards program, any student or faculty member may nominate a professor. A faculty committee makes the final selections.

“The idea is to recognize the single most important activity that goes on at our campus,” said Bruce Erickson, CSUN director of public relations. “Good teaching is the reason that the taxpayers put $100 million a year into this institution, and that students contribute another $50 million in tuition and fees. We want to recognize outstanding teachers in some way. These awards help us do that.”

Bavarian teaches industrial engineering courses and serves as faculty adviser for CSUN’s Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and director of several student projects sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Hall, assistant professor of English, developed the first gay male literature course at CSUN, “Gay Male Voices in British and American Literature.”

Castronovo, an assistant professor of Spanish, is an academic adviser for the Equal Opportunity Program of the School of Humanities and a member of the California Council of Foreign Language Teachers.

Mitchell, a professor of educational psychology and counseling, is the graduate coordinator and served as department chairwoman for five years. She has taught at CSUN for 23 years.

Moore, a biology professor, is co-founder and coordinator of the Janus program, a new approach to the teaching of science and humanities. The program is designed to promote greater understanding between the sciences and humanities of each other’s disciplines, methods and value systems.